Your Favorite Board Games Have Come to China

by John Pasden

10 Feb 2008

I saw these board games on a recent trip to my local Carrefour supermarket.

Makes sense; they’re all translated into Chinese except for Scrabble, because that just doesn’t work. [There are at least two Chinese adaptations of Scrabble, though, called Magi Compo and Chinese Squabble.]

John Pasden

Comments

Hey John,
I have bought a very respectable version of Monopoly called 强手大富翁 for 30 kuai on the side of the road. The roads are named for 唐老鸭 and other famous things. It’s a lot of fun, although it seems the paper bills are all counterfeit.

Monopoly is like $10 or less at Target. Life you can buy for less than that even. I bought those two games, the biligual editions, for a niece and nephew in the states for Christmas. The prices were outrageous, but I sucked it up all for the cause of bringing cool presents from China.

We had duplication of Monopoly late in 1980’s, called 强手, which I think was also under the copyright(?!). Not for a long time in 1990’s, more imitations appeared in street vendors’ (at that time, Communist China had few shopping mall), I remember it cost 5 RMB for an imitation in 1996 (Salary on average was 889 RMB).
It was not easy to obtain the board games in 1990, so my cousin hand-made her first simple board game, using white paper and watercolor pen. :PYes, it’s my favorite.

John, did you get a chance to look at the instruction manuals? I think the games are bilingual rather than Chinese-only. We’ve had them here in the Isetan department store in Tianjin since late last year.

In Shanghai there’s a grand theatre or at least I think that’s what it’s called. It had on lion king when it was in shanghai ages ago, very near that is a coffee place and by the street by that coffee place(blend something? which is where I bought someone selling a fake monopoly set. It was either 15 or 25 I got it down to and it’s basically the same as normal monopoly but it just has plastic coloured pieces rather than the dog, boot etc. It has mainly just the london prices with rmb in front so the most expensive is 400rmb. woo!

I bought Monopoly at the Shanghai No. 1 department store in 1987, still have it somewhere in the attic of my parents’ house. At the time I thought it was ironic that it was for sale in a communist country, but possibly the rapacious nature of the game fit into the ideology. Any idea if it was for sale in the pre-reform era?

u really don’t wanna buy monopoly that is not hasbro monopoly here in China , i bought one for 4o kuai and the quality sucks sucks can only be played a few times and it looks really untidy .But then later i found a place where i bought the real husbro thing for 199 rmb and it is good quality with the standard playing pieces

Great photos! I was wondering if anyone knows of any places where to buy other board games. The classics like monopoly and others are great but for people who play regularly they quickly become a bit boring.

I am in Kunming and i am starting a boardgame club there, that’s why i am asking.